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Many stressed-out people are attracted to eastern meditation, believing that it will give them relief from their “monkey mind” and lower their anxiety about life. Unfortunately, the monkey usually wins because people find the mental focus required for meditation devilishly hard. On a trip last year to India, I asked a Buddhist teacher why Westerners struggle so much with the practice. “You won’t get the benefit from meditation,” he said, “as long as you are meditating to get the benefit.”

You might call this the “meditation paradox,” and it seemed like the most Buddhist thing I had ever heard. But when I thought about it more, I realized that the teacher’s epigram held a deep truth abou

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